


Star-Crossed

by websandwhiskers



Series: The Proper Care and Feeding of Indefinable Things [14]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Jane Is Not Bella Swan, Jane is Awesome, Jane is a Feminist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-01
Updated: 2012-11-01
Packaged: 2017-11-17 12:40:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/websandwhiskers/pseuds/websandwhiskers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A vignette taking place during "Avengers", after shawarma, before Thor returns to Asgard with Loki.  Thor and Jane have their reunion, and discuss their future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Star-Crossed

“When will you leave?” Jane asks, curled into Thor's side, her cheek against his chest. Her heart is still hammering, though it's been a few minutes since they both, finally, seem to have had enough – sedentary lifestyle, she guesses, maybe she should do something about that.

 She knows she won't – things like exercise and food and sleep have never been her priority.

 Thor's heart is settled, a steady, reliable beat. He shifts a little beneath her.

 “On the morn,” he says. “I would delay if I thought it safe, but my brother . . . my brother is far too clever for that. Better he is safely away from here. Jane - ” He dislodges her, very gently, his huge hand cupping the back of her skull and settling it down to the pillow as he goes up on one elbow. “Jane, I would ask you -”

 Her hand darts up to cover his mouth. “Don't.”

 Thor frowns, and with his free hand, takes hers from his lips and just holds it. She can feel the calluses on his palm – centuries worth of calluses, she thinks, _centuries_. It makes her feel small and weak and childish, and she doesn't like it. His thumb is rubbing gentle circles over her knuckles as he watches her, his face settling into solemn planes. He brings her fingers back to his lips, kisses her fingertips almost reverently.

 “Jane,” Thor says, his tone already mourning, “have I mistaken you?”

 “No!” she says, and shimmies even closer, hooking a leg around his hip and pulling herself flush against him – because she's never been very good with subtlety and that's always gotten her into trouble, hasn't it? She's always expected sex to mean something – oh, not hearts and flowers and forever, but to be a form of _communication._ She's no good with flowers and sentiment and remembering what day it is and to shower, but 'I trust you inside my body, here, have an orgasm' is a pretty easy language, she'd always thought. Except nobody else ever understood that.

 Except, maybe, for Thor, who is now looking confused yet hopeful. She smiles at him, biting her lip. He smiles back.

 “I don't want you to ask, because I don't want to have to say no,” Jane says, and when his face falls, rushes to say, “Because I want to say yes! Just, not yet.”

 “Our acquaintance is brief,” Thor allows.

 She shakes her head. “It's not that. It's really not that, even though it really, really should be, because this is _insane,_ you know that, right? But . . . I'm sure of you. I am.”

 “As I am of you,” he says, and this time he kisses her palm, lingeringly, and she can't help the way her whole body sort of trembles and catches and pulls closer. “I know not when I will be able to reach Midgard again. It could be -”

 He falters.

 It could be her lifetime.

 “ - many years,” he finishes.

 “I know,” Jane says. “You can say it. I'm mortal. I'm . . . excessively finite.”

 “Jane -”

 “And as much as I want to be with you, as much as you're offering me, God, _everything,_ you're offering to take me to another _planet,_ not _even_ a planet, it's a whole new kind of celestial body and your people have knowledge that – it's a good offer,” she cuts herself off. “It's – it's the best thing anyone's ever offered me, Thor. And it would be even if it were . . . none of that. If it were just you. I'd still want that.”

 “And yet?”

 “I'm not going to be your kept woman,” Jane says bluntly. “Your kept mortal woman.”

 “It would not be that way,” Thor is quick to insist, suddenly restless, going up on both arms over her. His hair falls down around their faces, making a small, dark universe just between them. “I meant to wait to ask this – to let you decide if a life on Asgard was to your liking – but I won't have you think I mean you any dishonor. Jane, you must know I mean to make you -”

 He stops because her fingers are over his lips again.

 “You really, really can't ask me that yet,” Jane whispers, her heart trying to pound its way out of her chest.

 His lips move against her fingers, ready to speak again.

 “Don't,” Jane repeats, more firmly. “The - the answer's yes. But don't ask me yet.”

 He frowns down at her.

 “You're talking about – about making me a queen,” Jane says, “and I'm not a queen. No, stop,” she repeats, when his lips again move, the beginnings of protests. “Let me finish. Because what I'm trying to say is – I can be.”

 She pauses and sucks in a shaky breath to steady herself. “I've got more data now – I have Tony Stark offering me lab space and I have readings from the Tesseract and from what your father did to send you here, though I wasn't watching for that specifically, I think I can pick it out from a bunch of different places, observatories that were monitoring for different things entirely but they would have picked up – I'm close. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I think I can do it.”

 “You mean to build your own Bifrost,” Thor murmurs wonderingly, against the pads of her fingers.

 “I mean to build my own Bifrost,” Jane repeats, grinning a bit uneasily, and she knows what her face must look like – she knows she looks all of about twelve when she gets excited about something. She takes her hand from over his mouth, lets it slide around to where it wants to be, at the back of his neck, buried in his hair and pressed to the warm hollow at the base of his skull.

 “Why can you not build it from Asgard?” Thor asks. “I do not doubt you, Jane, not for a moment, but – I would rather be with you, in your trials and in your triumph. It was long ago that our Bifrost was built, and our mages and wise men are . . . not optomistic, about their present efforts to repair it. Do not mistake me, I believe your mind is worth ten of theirs, but here you are limited by the knowledge of your people, gathering scraps of glimpses of a faded thing, where there – there you would have access to all the knowledge of all the ages, of its original creation, surely -”

 “It would be quicker,” Jane says. “And easier.”

 He looks hopeful; she hates to ruin that look on his face, but she has to. This is the rest of both of their lives and possibly the political stability of a galaxy riding on her strength of will, and wow should that never, ever be the case – but it is, so she's going to be strong, she's got to be strong.

 “And Asgardian,” Jane finishes. “Whether it's a mortal mind that pieces it together or not, it will still be Asguardian design.”

 “You want this feat as a prize for the honor of Midgard,” Thor says, like he understands, but not like it makes him happy. “My fierce Jane.”

 “A bit,” Jane allows, and shrugs, and he gives her a wistful, approving smile. “And I want to figure it out for myself. And I want to wake up next to you every day for the rest of my life and feel good about it, and not like I'm dragging you down and no, don't, don't say it doesn't matter, because it does. You know it does. It matters if your people respect me, it matters because that effects whether and how much they respect you as their king, and it matters to how they view the power and authority of a queen in her own right and it matters to how women are respected in your culture for the next few millenia, Thor, that I be more than just someone to warm your bed and fawn over your ancient scrolls and the fact that you probably have first-hand recorded accounts of the Big Bang somewhere. It matters that I'm not a pupil and not a tourist and that your wife be a partner, an _equal._ ”

 “You are already better suited to a throne than I will ever be,” Thor says sadly. “Can you not see that?”

 “Because I'm right,” Jane says.

 “Aye,” Thor sighs, and lowers his forehead to hers, closing his eyes. “Because you are right.”

 “So I'm going to come to you,” Jane goes on, hushed. “I'm going to invent a new Bifrost, here, from _Earth,_ not Midgard, because that is what _we_ call _ourselves_. I am going to build it from those scraps and glimpses and from things you never noticed, stopped noticing millenia ago, and from materials built here, funded here, assembled here. I'm going to publish my findings, here. I am going to knock Tony Stark off the cover of Time Magazine, I am going to patent the fuck out of every single scribble in a notebook that ever had anything to do with the theory and then I am going to post it all on Wikipedia so that nobody can come in and say it's classified and I don't have a right to it. It is going to be _mine,_ and I am going to give it to the _world,_ to the _universe,_ not to some shady government organization, not to any government. I am going to build a rainbow bridge across the goddamn fucking stars and I am going to walk across it, and knock on your door, and I am going to ask _you_ to marry _me_.”

 By the end Thor is smiling wide, eyes open.

 “And I will say yes,” Thor says.

 “You'd _better,_ ” Jane answers, grinning up at him, though there are tears running down the sides of her face. “Because I'm going to hurry, but it's a lot – a lot to accomplish, and I'm going to _miss_ you, in the mean time. I'm going to miss you _so much_.”


End file.
